Subject: [NNTP] Draft 26

From: "Clive D.W. Feather" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 May 2005 10:49:57 +0100

Okay, draft 26 has gone to the I-D editor.

Copies in the usual place:

<http://www.davros.org/nntp-texts/draft26.txt>
<http://www.davros.org/nntp-texts/draft26.unpg.txt>
<http://www.davros.org/nntp-texts/draft26.html>
<http://www.davros.org/nntp-texts/draft26.nr>   (nroff source)

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <[email-masked]>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
Internet Expert     | Home:  <[email-masked]>  | Fax:    +44 870 051 9937
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Thus plc            |                            |

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From: Urs Janßen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 00:06:36 +0200

as CAPABILITIES allows "LIST OVERFIEW.FMT" to be returned but
the indicating capability for "LIST OVERFIEW.FMT" is OVER it might be
usefull to add a note about the OVER cmd (mandatory or not) if
"LIST OVERFIEW.FMT" is advertised.

e.g. is the following (not very usefull) answer allowed

[C] CAPABILITIES
[S] 101 Capability list:
[S] VERSION 2
[S] READER
[S] LIST ACTIVE NEWSGROUPS OVERFIEW.FMT
[S] .

or must OVER be implemented if LIST OVERFIEW.FMT is advertised.

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From: Ken Murchison <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 21:26:50 -0400

> or must OVER be implemented if LIST OVERFIEW.FMT is advertised.

IMO, yes.  And LIST OVERVIEW.FMT should only be advertised if OVER is 
advertised.

It's a good question and a point of confusion that I wanted to avoid by 
not having OVERVIEW.FMT (and HEADERS for that matter) listed in the 
"LIST" capability at all.  The OVER capability should be enough to 
indicate that the OVER and LIST OVERVIEW.FMT commands are available, but 
I lost this argument.

-- 
Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
--PGP Public Key--    http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp

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From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 18:37:31 -0700

> indicate that the OVER and LIST OVERVIEW.FMT commands are available, but

Yeah, but I could have sworn that we added language somewhere else to make
this clear.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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From: "Clive D.W. Feather" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 11:31:26 +0100

> [S] LIST ACTIVE NEWSGROUPS OVERFIEW.FMT

Yes.

> or must OVER be implemented if LIST OVERFIEW.FMT is advertised.

No. It's the other way round: LIST OVERVIEW.FMT must be implemented if OVER
is advertised.

Consider an implementation that provides XOVER but not OVER. It can
advertise LIST OVERVIEW.FMT but can't advertise OVER.

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From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 09:20:48 -0700

> advertise LIST OVERVIEW.FMT but can't advertise OVER.

Although note that the LIST OVERVIEW.FMT command description says that it
returns the fields returned by OVER, so it's not at all clear what it
should return on a server that doesn't implement OVER.  It's kind of a
nonsensical thing to do.

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From: Urs Janßen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 13:03:09 +0200

> advertise LIST OVERVIEW.FMT but can't advertise OVER.

but such an implemenatation usualy doesn't understand CAPABILITIES -
anyway if LIST OVERVIEW.FMT in CAPABILITIES implies that the server
supports OVER or not: this should be clarified in the document as it
currently seems not to be clear (that's what I wanted to point out).

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From: "Clive D.W. Feather" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 09:31:13 +0100

Russ Allbery said:
> returns the fields returned by OVER,

Not quite: it says "The information contains one line per field in the
order they are returned by the OVER command". If there is no OVER command,
then the statement means nothing.

However, perhaps we should put "(if implemented)" in there.

Similarly for LIST HEADERS.

> so it's not at all clear what it

No, because of XOVER.

Note that we are clear that this situation is allowed: see 3.4:

    If the label is not included, the server MAY support none or some of
    the commands, but SHOULD NOT support all of them. In general, there
    will be no way for a client to determine which commands are supported
    without trying them.

("label" is a capability label; the "OVER" label in this instance). Also
note that it says:

    Otherwise the command MUST be fully implemented as specified; a server
    MUST NOT only partially implement any of the commands in this
    specification.

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From: "Clive D.W. Feather" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 09:37:22 +0100

> but such an implemenatation usualy doesn't understand CAPABILITIES -

Yet.

> currently seems not to be clear (that's what I wanted to point out).

I believe the document is clear:

* LIST OVERVIEW.FMT in CAPABILITIES means LIST OVERVIEW.FMT is supported.
* OVER in CAPABILITIES means both OVER and LIST OVERVIEW.FMT are supported.
* If OVER is not specified, either OVER or LIST OVERVIEW.FMT MAY be
  supported but SHOULD NOT both be.

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From: "Clive D.W. Feather" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 09:39:29 +0100

> However, perhaps we should put "(if implemented)" in there.

On second thoughts, I think we need an additional paragraph:

    If the OVER command is not implemented, the meaning of the output
    from this command is not specified but it must still meet the
    above syntactic requirements.

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From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 09:02:25 -0700

>> so it's not at all clear what it should return on a server that doesn't
>> implement OVER.  It's kind of a nonsensical thing to do.

> No, because of XOVER.

Oh, right.  D'oh.  We had this conversation already.  I'm sorry for having
forgotten that.